In his new book, the Japanese American peach farmer unearths his family’s painful, hidden history and explores its impact on his identity.
X
June 1, 2009
Last week The Humane Society of the United States co-hosted a screening of the film Food, Inc. for policymakers in Sacramento. It was a lively and engaged crowd representing the gamut from vegan activists to staunch carnivores, and it seemed every one of them learned something from Food, Inc. Alice Waters, Martin Sheen, Elise Pearlstein (the film’s producer) and the two most powerful state Senators brought cache and insight with their post-screening panel.
Dave Murphy’s great review of Food, Inc. the other day was spot-on and HSUS urges everyone to see it. Its fundamental aim is to expose the rampant abuse of power that has resulted in an inefficient, polluting, degrading, cruel, and unhealthy food system in America. To add to Dave’s commentary, I wanted to offer the perspective of someone who works daily to address the torturous conditions that 10 billion animals raised for food routinely each year endure.
About a third of the film’s footage features feedlots, confinement facilities, and slaughterhouses. In an artful and effective way, images flick quickly from living animal to dead animal to carcass to giant vats of flesh. In so doing, the film challenges the cognitive dissonance so many people live with: identifying and empathizing with individual animals while eating others.
One scene sticks out in this regard and generated an interesting discussion at the Sacramento screening. Both the film and Michael Pollan lionize Joel Salatin, who at his Polyface Farms in Virginia, is shown raising many of his animals in what most people would consider the “old-fashioned” way – outdoors, in small herds, with species-appropriate feed. And certainly Salatin’s methods seem far preferable to how most farm animals are raised. But the film also shows a matter-of-fact Salatin and crew performing an outdoor slaughter of a number of chickens. As he chats amiably to the camera, Salatin and his co-workers grab flapping and screaming birds, cut their throats while they’re fully conscious, and then de-feather and dismember the carcasses.
As was the case the two other times when I watched this scene with an audience, I looked around to see that the vast majority of the crowd reacts viscerally: grimacing, covering eyes, wincing, looking away. As Salatin and his workers engage in these fundamentally violent acts, the audience (mostly meat-eaters) becomes uncomfortable.
It’s in this space that Food, Inc. has the biggest opportunity to impact the lives of the 10 billion animals – nearly all of whom endure far more suffering than Salatin’s chickens. If we cannot accept our role in the process that turns living, breathing animals into commodities to be slaughtered and sold, we may want to consider whether our dietary choices really reflect our values.
At the film’s close, a number of individual actions are proposed for filmgoers who will definitely be hungry for change. But only one of those encouragements has the potential to positively affect all of the ills the film highlights: reducing our consumption of animal products.
The most effective choice we can make right now is to reduce our consumption of animals. And it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. It is great to stop eating animals altogether, but every meal counts. And it’s not just The Humane Society of the United States on board with this idea: writers such as the New York Times’ Mark Bittman and Pollan advocate reduction as well, with Bittman’s new book describing his “vegan until dinner” strategy.
A new PSA for Food, Inc. featuring NBA star and vegan John Salley was unveiled at the Sacramento screening, and appears now on our web site. I spent perhaps too many words here saying what he sums up best, “Skip the meat, eat some veggies. You are the consumer, you have the power. Vote with your fork, three times a day.”
March 23, 2023
In his new book, the Japanese American peach farmer unearths his family’s painful, hidden history and explores its impact on his identity.
March 20, 2023
March 9, 2023
More to the point, we don't need to eat animals. Vegetarian eating is just as healthy -- and likely healthier -- than a meat/egg/dairy-centered diet. Since it's a matter of choice, each of us can choose kindness of cruelty and not take these animals' lives.
Free vegetarian recipes are available at www.VegRecipes.org
I will only address one of the points here, but all of them are very biased. Yes, we feed corn to farm animals. This is not the corn that most consumers would buy, this is field corn, its alot harder and does not tast like sweet corn. Ither than corn bread, muffins, and a few other uses field corn must be processed in order for us to eat. Farm animals effeicently convert hay and corn into a form that we love - meat!
So-
Pretty much everyone knows that field corn is for animals. The point is that if we didn't use those fields for field corn, we could be growing food for humans in the same space. The average American needs to see where their food comes from, since most people are so far removed. My first CSA farmer fed 60 families with only two acres, plus she also had extra to sell at two farmer's markets.
I hope people will also become concerned with the "meat" served to school children every day. It made me very glad that my son would never eat a school lunch. And how long will we continue to let children die from ecoli?
I have yet to see the film. However, I do wonder about the motivation behind the making of this film. No argument: feedlot operations are a horror and a moral/environmental travesty. But when a place like Polyface Farm is lumped in with big ag because they don't slaughter their chickens with Zen reverence or an intravenous drip to calm the birds before dispatching them - you've lost my sympathies.
Life is valued by quality, not quantity. No one reading these words has any guarantee that they'll be here to read them tomorrow. Salatin's animals have X good weeks or months of life, and one bad morning or afternoon. How many of us can say the same? Life doesn't promise any creature that the end will be a painless or happy occasion, particularly if said creature is wild. A wild songbird died in my backyard a few days ago from a prolapsed uterus. Was that a better death than the Polyface chickens had?
Salatin's domesticated animals are raised for human consumption, provided with wholesome feed, protection from predators, and the ability to express their full range of natural behaviors. So now Polyface is to be criticized over the last few moments of those animals' lives? Spare me. Show me a better method of killing a few hundred animals at a time on a regular basis, or just admit that this is 100% pure radical vegan propaganda.
This particular blogger is affiliated with the HSUS, which is a decidely pro-vegan organization. The HSUS does have some involvement with the movie, but so does Slow Food USA, Heifer International and Sustainable Table, all whom support livestock rearing for food purposes in the manner you describe.
http://www.youtube.com/v/c2sgaO44_1c&hl=en&fs=1
There is also a book companion to the movie, Food, Inc. available at Amazon.com. The book explores topics that were discussed in the movie, such as the industrialization of our food supply and the benefits of local and organic eating. Food experts including Marion Nestle, Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, and Anna Lappé, take these topics to another level through thirteen fascinating essays, some of which have been written especially for this book. Check it out!
Shannon Matloob
Participant Media